Teachers' Page

School Visits

I love working with children and their teachers. I offer a range of programs for grades 3 through 8, and can also design one as needed for high school students. (I like to coordinate my writing workshop with the current class projects.)

For the past few years, I have participated in the Festival To Go program, whereby my writing group sets up a program with a couple Rochester City schools. To celebrate our annual Children's Book Festival , held at Monroe Community College each fall, some of our authors volunteer to go into the schools and present a writing class, read a story, whatever. It provides those children who are not able to attend the Festival the chance to meet authors and talk about writing. It's a very exciting time for both the children and me!

Another popular program I personally provide consists of a one-class writing workshop in which I lead the students through my unique fool-proof process of writing a paper or an assignment. I call it "Topic".

OR:

I will design a program to fit:

the academic needs of the students

the schedule of the teacher

the budget of the school

One 4-week program (40 mins./week), in which I worked with a 5th grade remedial reading class, produced a short story that was published! The children authored the story, which I soon decided was a real winner.

I recorded, edited and submitted it for them, preparing them for the real probability of rejection. It was accepted by TWO publishers and was published April 1998 in My Friend magazine, with the children's school photos woven across the 2-page spread.